Wait, so when was the colour thing explained? Shojo didn't elaborate it in his crayon-o-vision.

► Show Spoiler

The color stuff has never been explicitly stated before, but describing it requires reiterating a lot of other stuff that we do already know. I don't like the color idea very much, and I don't like the repetition very much either.

I don't think the color idea is so bad. I mean, yeah, it sounds stupid on the face of it, but it's a dumbed-down-x-1,000,000 version of some weird pseudo-theological hocus-pocus. And, as for a lot of it being review, (granted it's been a long time since I've read the original part about the snarl, so I could be wrong) the only part that's gone over again is what's relevant to thor's color talk. So, a quick review of Snarl 101 before we get to Snarl 201. And considering it's been multiple years, and books, in between, I appreciate the review. I can understand how you might not, though.

One quick question, though. Have we seen the purple god before? Who is he?

Thanks to Arch Lich Burns for the avatar, and Mnementh for the mustache.

Ã”Ã‡Â£Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?Ã”Ã‡Ã˜
Ã”Ã‡Ã² Terry Pratchett

I don't think the color idea is so bad. I mean, yeah, it sounds stupid on the face of it, but it's a dumbed-down-x-1,000,000 version of some weird pseudo-theological hocus-pocus.

I would rather have heard the "technobabble", if some effort was put into making it sound fitting. Just off the top of my head, for instance:

"Every creation of one of the three pantheons has a specific mythic resonance, representing the underlying essence which unifies the pantheon. We Northern gods, for example, are unified by a definition of virtue that arises from populations living primarily in high temperate climes, where harsh winters require cooperation to survive, and the community is unified by the need to unite against common enemies. All of those factors, from the bounty of a surprisingly mild fall harvest, to the rugged grandeur and majesty of the difficult terrain of the Northlands, to the monsters that haunt the wilderness and terrify the populace into huddling together or taking up arms...all of these details unify into a single cohesive worldview, and everything created by the Northern gods resonates to that shared reality.

"The other two pantheons have their own paradigms, which overlap a great deal with ours, but are different. The Western gods mostly inhabit a desert, so their myth-arc emphasizes the relative pointlessness of attempts to survive in the face of the wasteland they dwell in; they are far less cooperative than us, because while Northern folk can work together to build shelters and stockpile food for a cold winter, there's far less the Westerners can do to deal with an exceptionally hot summer, a drought that destroys the water reserves and leaves them to die slowly and miserably, while any effort they take to try and save themselves only makes them sweat more, suffer more heatstroke, and die faster. Thusly, they have much more difficulty working together, have a stronger association between survival and individual power, and are more likely to casually betray each other out of a 'nothing personal' business need. Where virtue can exist, it takes a more extremist viewpoint, and is less likely to condescend to the less-noble, since it is easier to understand why someone is driven to desperation.

"And in contrast to all this, while the Western gods are more numerous than us, and spend more time at each other's throats, the Southern gods are very limited in number and VERY tight-knit, seeing themselves as all components in a single cosmic cycle, so that even their most severe internal conflicts are more likely to be resolved through political bickering rather than overt or covert warfare, with the exception of individuals or groups which fail to fall within the structure of the shared principles that underpin the group (honor, order, the 'cosmic flow', and so forth). The relative lushness of the tropical lands on and around the Southern Continent make life relatively easy, compared to the other two regions, and the various cultures that develop there tend to emphasize harmony and stability rather than mere survival, which is why their shared values are taken so seriously that iconoclasm is condemned more seriously than morally questionable actions taken within the frameworks of tradition, civic duty, or the 'Mandate of Heaven'.

"Each of these three different paradigms, these three cohesive worldviews which unify all the disparate details of the common reality, forms a single mythic pattern. Any creation which includes only one such pattern is very 'low resolution', as an Illusionist would put it; only one 'element' is involved in creating it, and thus it is very easily 'uncreated'; any other god can wave it away just as easily as the first one wished it into being. But if two or three pantheons work together, they create materials, energies, and entities which are 'more complete', more robustly constituted. They weave their resonances together, creating a fuller and more complete sort of creation; it takes perhaps ten times more effort to create this way, but the result is more like one hundred times as difficult to destroy. And this is the problem...because there used to be a fourth pantheon, with a fourth mythic pattern, and the Snarl was created by them as well as the three of us. With these four patterns composing it, the Snarl is about one hundred times as powerful, and a thousand times as hard to destroy, as a creation of just three mythic resonances. And this version of the universe is the first one we have ever created, in all these thousands of attempts, which contains a fourth resonance again. For the first time ever, a fourth pantheon, a single god whose worldview utterly differs from that of all three of us, has organically emerged from within the creation. I don't know exactly what he believes, but we gods can tell with a glance that he is utterly unlike all of us, as different from all of us as the lost Eastern gods were, and that means we have an opportunity we have never previously had."

Obviously this is a lot less concise than the description of "colors". But I would have been much happier with three strips that gradually laid all this out (even given my impatience to move on) than I am with this one strip summarizing the concept in such a reductive way.

To each their own. I definitely understand, but I also think that it would have driven me crazy getting that much info all at once, spread across several pages, with at least one joke on each page (because he does try to fit a joke on each page) taking up even more space and slowing it down. The tiny bit of technobabble that Thor does get out, combined with the color metaphor is enough that I can kind of guess at what they mean.

Thanks to Arch Lich Burns for the avatar, and Mnementh for the mustache.

Ã”Ã‡Â£Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?Ã”Ã‡Ã˜
Ã”Ã‡Ã² Terry Pratchett

Thanks to Arch Lich Burns for the avatar, and Mnementh for the mustache.

Ã”Ã‡Â£Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?Ã”Ã‡Ã˜
Ã”Ã‡Ã² Terry Pratchett

Och, dang whisperers. Just so I stick around during the ad-break in a hope to find out what the secret is about (and how the Dwarves could've forgotten about it), just to find out that adter the ad-break the story continues with a different viewpoint (i.e. following Roy again).